[365] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: My understanding of ANS, etc (corrections welcome)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Lee Schoffstall)
Thu Mar 14 10:59:42 1991
To: ddern@world.std.com (Daniel P Dern)
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 14 Mar 91 09:48:56 EST."
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 91 09:52:57 -0500
From: "Martin Lee Schoffstall" <schoff@psi.com>
At the OTA conference last month, SURANET was questioned on their
deal with ANS, they said it was under negotiations, but that they
would plug in the individual
educational institutions to SURANET and ANS would connect
in individual commercial organizations to ANSNet, and they would jointly market
each other et al.
Al Weis worriedly (pruportedly, worried about his non-profit shell)
interrupted and said: "...no... you mean the commercial RESEARCH
organanizations....ANS will do..."
Sounds pretty retail to me.
As for the commercial traffic issues, most people would probably find
your statements niave, non-public conversations as reported to me
talk about a "for profit subsidiary" and other such things.
Lets be honest here, who runs ANS? They are major league commercial
people, from major league corporations. Even the choice of state
of incorporation was a sophisticates choice.
Marty
---------
My understanding of ANS' current charter/intention, based on
assorted reading, discussions, and whatnot, is that their
current charter is _solely_ wholesale connect, e.g., from
regional/midlevels to their backbone, but _NO_ retail/site
direct connection. I have no way to assess whether this is
indeed the case, but this is what I've been told. (Whether
supercomputer centers can be considered wholesale connections
is an interesting question within that.)
Also -- again, my understanding -- is that ANS has been set up
explicitly as a non-profit, carrying ONLY R&D&E traffic. But
that the corporate partners _do_ retain the option of also setting
up a for-profit, corporate, carry-anything backbone (presumably
using their giganickel.
I'd be curious to know more about what ANS is up to, who's there
besides the current execs -- their absence within this list,
participation wise, seems odd.
Daniel Dern
ddern@world.std.com
